I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

As that old “Sesame Street” song goes, One of things is not like the others. One of these things just isn’t the same.

As you’ve probably heard by now, what The Onion is apologizing for is a tweet sent during the Academy Awards about the nine-year-old star of “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” “Everyone else is afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a [strongly misogynistic word generally reserved for grown women, at least in American usage], right?” read the message from The Onion’s official Twitter account. After a hailstorm of complaints, the tweet was deleted. (You can see it here if you care to.)

“Miss Wallis, you are young and talented and deserve better,” Onion CEO Steve Hannah wrote, vowing to “take immediate steps to discipline those responsible.”

But telling comedy writers that they can now be “disciplined” for telling jokes that fall well within The Onion’s established parameters, just because a lot of humorless people happened to be paying attention at the moment a particular joke hit — that’s a new low.

Much has been written about how Twitter and other social media platforms lull or tempt users into shooting their mouths off in ways they quickly regret. It turns out it also has the power to induce some people into blurting out apologies they should have swallowed.

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Note: Since several readers seemed to think that where The Onion crossed the line was in targeting a real, specific child with a rude joke, I added a paragraph citing several instances in which it has done so before.

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See, I don’t get that at all. Why are we talking about this joke in terms of its effect on Wallis? The Onion has always been written under the assumption that it’s for grown-ups. If we’re going to start talking about whether its jokes are appropriate for 9-year-olds, well, you might as well pull the plug. There are a ton of great, classic Onion pieces that young kids wouldn’t get and shouldn’t read.

I can tell you don’t get my point of view. The joke didn’t cross the line for you. Just know that many people, who do appreciate the Onion and who do understand the joke, see this differently… as something plain ugly and yes, deserving of an apology.

Janet, The Onion has probably published hundreds if not thousands of articles over the 20-plus years of its existence that significant numbers of people found offensive. Yet it has never felt the need to apologize and its popularity has never suffered. Is this the most outrageous piece of satire The Onion has ever published? That’s a subjective question and therefore impossible to answer. What’s objectively obvious is that this is the one that offended the most people the fastest, entirely thanks to Twitter and the spotlight of the Oscars.

Do I think no satirist should ever be expected to apologize for bad judgment? No. Do I think a publication with as shining a track record of funniness and relevance would be making a terrible mistake to start outsourcing its gauge of what’s acceptable? Absolutely.

You’re missing the point that it wasn’t satirical. No wit about it. If you have to explain the joke…

They aren’t outsourcing the gauge of what is acceptable. They have editorial standards (watch the NPR video and you will see how rigorous the process is). They have never apologized for any of the ARTICLES they’ve published because they go through a review process before they get published. Event those one liners they have for news in brief are vetted.

Twitter is a different medium, one that they obviously had not held to the same vetting process as they do the rest of the brand. On the fly jokes are not always funny, and are sometimes horribly offensive, so the apology was warranted. By subjecting their feed to the same standards as the rest of the organization, they can prevent having to apologize ever again.

I disagree with the majority of the opinions on this page. You people have got to be out of your minds. I don’t care if The Onion is supposedly about satire and parody, or if I’m familiar with them. All of these articles cited are about children. Children–maybe not your child, but somebody’s child. Maybe the person who wrote it needs to have a child, a child that is under 16 years old and is considered to be talented and receives the opportunity to be recognized for the talent. And them maybe some asshole with a Twitter account needs to call them a slur. Maybe that asshole will know what it’s like.

So why did they apologize? You can talk all day about the CEO vs. the staff. Nobody cares. An image is an image and they chose to ‘inflate’ this particular instance by deleting it and then apologizing for it, therefore The Onion, as an entity, doesn’t approve and admits it was a tasteless, horrible miss. That includes the author. The CEO spoke for him or her. I think a lot of things are funny. But I also know when and why it shouldn’t be shared with the public.

The readership recognized the Onion crossed the line, It’s leader recognized it but Jeff says not so. Just a joke in bad taste like all of their other jokes. So tell me Jeff if every day of the year I behave like an imbecile and one particular day my behavior is particularly caustic and people fear I am causing undue harm..I’m not liable for it because my behavior was in somone’s estimation about as bad as it usually is. And nobody should ever have to apologize for anything that is similiar to what they are usually about..Hmmm see where you argument gets you. In reality though you are not going to get it because you just don’t want to ..end of story.